In the years 1762-64-66 Sterne accepted the hospitality of the host, whom he called ‘the great protector of wits and the sçavans who are no wits,’ to so large an extent that he could say the Baron’s house was as his own. To be sure, d’Holbach’s ‘joyous sett’ must have admirably suited this Parson Yorick, who had ‘no religion but in appearance,’ and a domestic morality very little better than the worst of the Baron’s French convives.
The ‘broad, unmeaning face’ of Hume, the historian, was sometimes to be seen at d’Holbach’s table, where he found himself for the first time with thinkers not too narrow, but too emancipated, for his liking. It was the Baron who, speaking from experience, warned Hume against nourishing in his bosom a serpent like Rousseau, and from d’Holbach’s house, says Hume’s biographer, Burton, that the story of the famous quarrel between Hume and Rousseau spread all over France ‘in a moment.’
David Garrick came to Grandval, and delighted an age and a company passionately devoted to histrionic talent. A sprightly Madame Riccoboni used to write accounts of d’Holbach’s society to the actor when he had gone back to England; and whenever she saw the Baron looked bored or worried, made that expression a text on which to moralise on the worthlessness of riches.
The Baron did not often appear anything but placid, however, and there are very few of his guests who even hint at anything in himself or his gatherings which was not smooth and delightful.
Horace Walpole, indeed, talks of ‘dull d’Olbach’s.’ But then Horace was the intimate friend of Madame du Deffand, who loathed ‘les philosophes’ and all their ways and works, and on one occasion at least was so unlucky as to find himself at one of the Baron’s dinner parties, not only the solitary Englishman out of a party of twelve, but next to that tedious Raynal. ‘I dreaded opening my mouth in French before so many people and so many servants,’ says Horace; and to avoid being bored by the ‘Two Indies,’ he made signs to Raynal that he was deaf. After dinner, Raynal discovered the trick, and naturally was not pleased.
John Wilkes, with his ugly face, his flaming past, and his irresistible charm, also sat at the Baron’s cosmopolitan board; as did Benjamin Franklin, Lord Shelburne, and Priestley—Non-conformist, chemist, and one of the founders of modern scientific criticism.
Some of these people, of course, only dined, or were merely invited to spend a long day in the Grandval grounds and gardens; but many became part of the house party for days, like Galiani, for weeks, like Grimm, for months, like Diderot, or for ever, like Father Hoop.
In the forenoon, the guests were left entirely to their own devices, and unless by special arrangement, never met each other or their host until dinner-time at half-past one or two. Some of them had arrived with a chef-d’œuvre in their pockets—or, it might be, up their sleeves. Here, in the pleasant solitude of these morning hours, Galiani, no doubt, was ‘settling the question of the Corn Laws,’ Grimm engrossed with his ‘Literary Correspondence,’ and Hoop arranging his pessimism into a regular system. (Madame d’Aine had thoughtfully provided Hoop with a bedroom overlooking the moat, so that he could at any moment put his principles into practice and throw himself into it.) Diderot, beside his open windows and with the solace of a cup of tea, wrote for Mademoiselle Volland those descriptions of life at Grandval to which all narrators of it are indebted.
As for the Baron—the Baron always seemed to have plenty to do in that magnificent library, where he could invariably find chapter and verse for the maddest of Diderot’s theories, but where the actual nature of his occupation was known only to Diderot himself, to a certain very useful friend called Naigeon, who, having been painter and sculptor, had finally settled into a philosopher, and to La Grange, the d’Holbach children’s tutor.
It is charitable to suppose that the women also performed their duties in the morning, since it is certain they performed none at any other time of day. But in this age, if a woman was witty and charming, her métier was considered to be fulfilled, and she not only did nothing practical for the good of humanity, but, better still, never even felt she ought to be doing something. Madame d’Holbach had her lute and her embroidery frame, the kindest of clever husbands, those engaging babies, and a perpetual house party. What more could be expected of her? Of Madame d’Aine, it is not recorded that she had any other rôle than that of adding to the gaiety of her household.